The Orangeburg massacre took place on February 8, 1968 at South Carolina State University, after police shot about 200 unarmed black student demonstrators when protesting for civil rights, and the protest turned deadly into a massacre where three young men were killed and 28 people were injured.

This event became known as the Orangeburg Massacre, and it is one of the most violent events of the civil rights movement. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial segregation officially ended in much of the South, but it did not change the attitudes of some of its white citizens, so many blacks were still subjected persecuted and discriminated against by whites.

One of those whites was Harry Floyd, a bowler in Orlinburg and South Carolina, who claimed his bowling alley was exempt from segregation laws because it was private property, but the Black Orangeburgers were determined to change his mind. Predominantly black universities, namely South Carolina State and Claflin University.

This put the city in a unique position, in terms of having more educated blacks than some other southern regions, and many students became involved in the civil rights movement, determined to turn the tide of racism within their small town and beyond, and local black leaders tried several times to persuade Floyd incorporated his own bowling alley, but repeatedly refused to bother his long-established customers.

On February 5, 1968, a small group of students went to protest against the racist white policy against them, but Floyd refused to enter them, so they left peacefully, but the word of Floyd's rejection spread on college campuses alike like wildfire, and the next night a larger crowd returned to the bowling alley, and they were confronted by Before the police, who threatened, to disperse them with water and fire.

The students resisted by taunting them and lighting some pyrotechnics, and a glass window was broken, so the police started beating both male and female students. lesson or something, and at the end of the night fifteen students were arrested and at least ten students were treated and one police officer was injured).

Once again word spread quickly about the bowling disturbances and angered the students, tensions escalated in Orangeburg and some predicted looting and violence, so some shopkeepers armed, Governor Robert McNair, supposedly one of the South's more moderate rulers, insisted that black power leaders instigate student unrest. He called on the National Guard and tanks to intimidate the students and quell the expected violence.

Joining the student protesters was Cleveland Sellers, a South Carolina citizen and civil rights activist who, after graduating from Howard University in 1967, returned to South Carolina with the aim of teaching students black history, but his activism put him on the government's radar, giving him a reputation as a black hardliner.

By Thursday, February 8, vendors and hundreds of students had gathered on the SC campus to protest racial segregation in Bowling Alley, and other privately owned establishments. There were also National Guard forces with law enforcement forces led by Commander Pete Strom under orders, To keep protesters on campus and prevent them from inciting riots, many police officers were armed with rifles.

Students began with a large demonstration in front of the campus entrance, burning tires and throwing stones and other objects at the police. Finally, Sheriff Storm ordered the fire to be put out. When the firefighters put out the fire, one of the policemen was hit with a heavy wooden machine gun, and gunshots were allegedly heard.

Here some police raised their weapons and opened fire in the dark on the demonstrators for several seconds, chaos and absolute terror engulfed the place as the students were scrambling to escape, and three students were shot and killed by the police, Sami Hammond was shot in the back, while Delano was shot Middleton is a 17-year-old high school student, whose mother has been working at SC State for seven years.

18-year-old Henry Smith was also shot three times and at least 28 protesters were badly injured, most of them in the back or side, while fleeing the police assault, the hospital vendors were arrested and charged with inciting Rioting, Chief Stromman claimed that the vendors profited from America's fear of black power and students, who had never put up a resistance of their own, and Governor McNair blamed the incident on black agitators.

The Orangeburg massacre was at the same time as the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, and as a result it was largely ignored by the press, and in addition some press coverage was incorrect, for example the Associated Press initially reported that student protesters were armed, shooting First and then they exchanged fire with the police officers.

This was a mistake though some of the officers later stated that they heard small arms fire, and thought they were shooting before the crowd was shot, so they acted in self-defence, and the black group was horrified by the massacres and the subsequent bad press, and many took to the streets in protest and demonstrated in Raleigh, the capital of South Carolina.

Even civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. sent a telegram to President Lyndon B. Johnson, stating that (the deaths in Orangeburg lie on the conscience of President Strom and the government of South Carolina,) and among at least 70 armed police officers on the scene of the Orangeburg massacre, he charged Only to nine of them accused of shooting protesters.

The federal government was brought to trial for imposing a summary sentence without due process, although US Attorney General Ramsey Clark later said the officers had lost control of themselves. At trial, the officers testified that they had acted in self-defence, and although there was no solid evidence to support their claims, all of the men were acquitted. One of the officers, Corporal Joseph Lanier Jr., later said, (I was just a soldier, I was just a person there, and what I did was a reaction to what my leaders had asked of me.) He also said, (We tried very hard not to, but it did.)

After the sellers' convictions, South Carolina effectively closed the book on the Orangeburg massacre, though no one was held accountable for the students killed and injured that night. The lack of justice and conflicting accounts of what happened fueled the racial divide between black and white Orangeburgers, even That many historians left the event far beyond civil rights articles and textbooks.

The survivors of the Orangeburg massacre were identified and said that the deaths of Hammond, Middleton and Smith would not be in vain. In 1999, many of them joined the white residents of Orangeburg and called for healing in the community. Cleveland Sellers in the South Carolina Legislature.

Speaking at a South Carolina memorial service to honor those lost in the massacre, he said: (We participate here today in our own memorial to remember the three dead and 27 wounded in yet another massacre, that recalled another people's struggle against oppression, those men who died here. They were not martyrs for a dream, but soldiers of the cause).

Despite official government apologies, most survivors of the Orangeburg massacre feel South Carolina continues to suppress knowledge of what really happened. Fifty years later they still haunt the massacre that occurred, vowing to continue honoring the victims and working to bring the truth to light to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.